Dirty

by Megan Hart

  “It’s your junk,” she said, like that made a difference.

  If my visit surprised or pleased her, I saw no sign of either. She drew in the smoke and let it out, squinching her eyes shut in a way that feathered wrinkles around her eyes.

  “Fine. I’ll take a look through it before I go.”

  We sipped our coffee in silence. I’d never sat at her table like this, two adults drinking coffee. I waited to feel strange about it, and then I did.

  If my mother did, she kept it to herself. “So, Ella. Where’s your friend?”

  I gave her a look. She tossed up her hands. “What? What? I shouldn’t ask?”

  “Do you really care?”

  She took another drag. “It would be good for you to have a man.”

  “You didn’t seem to think so when he was here.”

  My mother has always been good at rewriting history to suit herself. “What are you talking about? He seemed very nice for a Jew.”

  I let my head fall forward with a groan. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Not in this house,” she warned. “Don’t take the name of our Lord in vain.”

  “I’m sorry.” I drank some of her coffee, which was too strong.

  “You know I think it’s long past time you got married. Had some children. Had a real life.”

  The rant was an old one, but for the first time I allowed myself to listen not only to her words but to the meaning behind them.

  “I have a life. A real life. I don’t need to be defined by a husband or children to have a real life.”

  My mother scoffed. “You need something other than those damned numbers, Ella.”

  “Yes, because I’ve had such a good role model,” I retorted.

  She stubbed out her cigarette and crossed her arms over her ample chest. Her expertly applied makeup couldn’t hide the circles under her eyes. “I wish you weren’t so smart with me all the time. I wish you took better care of yourself. I wish you saw I was only trying to look out for you instead of jumping down my throat every time we talk.”

  I’d been holding both hands around my mug to warm them, but I put it down and spread them flat on the tabletop. I looked at her, trying hard to see myself in the curve of her jaw, the color of her eyes, the style of her hair. I tried to find myself in my mother, some thread of connection to prove I had once swum inside her womb and was not just an afterthought. That once upon a time she had looked at me with something other than disappointment.

  “I wish I was fifteen again, and I had told Andrew no when he asked me if I loved him. And I wish he’d listened to me instead of getting into my bed.”

  The color drained from her face, leaving two bright spots of blush high on her cheeks. For an instant I thought she was going to pass out. Or maybe scream.

  Instead, she slapped my face hard enough to rock me back in my chair. I put my hand over the heat the blow left behind on my cheek. Then I looked her in the eyes.

  “And I wish you would stop blaming me for it.”

  I tensed for the next slap, or the coffee in my face, or the shrieks and accusations. I was not prepared for what she did next. She started to cry.

  Real, fat tears welled in her eyes and left tracks in her foundation. They dripped off her chin and left dark marks on her navy silk blouse. She drew in a slow, hitching breath as her mouth trembled to let out a sob.

  “Who else could I blame?” my mother said, the words striking me harder than her slap. “He’s dead.”

  I wanted to get up but didn’t have the strength to do it. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “I knew.” She reached for a napkin and blew her nose, then took another to pat her eyes. Her mascara left half circles of black on the white paper.

  “You called me a liar and a whore.” The words stuck in my throat before I forced them out. They felt sharp, like they left scratches.

  I had never seen her look so bleak. So unconcerned with how her tears might have smudged her makeup and turned her nose red. My mother wiped her eyes again, removing more of the eyeliner, shadow, mascara. She looked naked without it. Vulnerable.

  “Do you think I was a liar and a whore?” I wanted to sound demanding. I only sounded pleading.

  “No, Ella. I don’t.”

  “Then why did you say it?” I wept, too, but didn’t bother wiping my face. I kept my hands anchored flat on the table. “Why?”

  “Because I thought maybe saying it would make it true!” She cried. “Because I didn’t want to believe he would do those things to you! I didn’t want to believe it, Ella, that my son could work such evil! I wanted to make you a liar because that would mean it wasn’t true. Because I would rather have a daughter who’s a liar and a whore than a son who raped his sister.”

  “Like you’d rather have a son who is gay?” I asked, more gently than I had ever thought I’d be able to. “You’d rather have one son dead by his own hand and a daughter who doesn’t have a real life than a son who’s alive and well but likes men?”

  It didn’t make me feel good to watch her flinch and crumble, shrivel like the legs of the Wicked Witch of the West when Dorothy took off those shoes. I had always thought confronting her would leave me more triumphant. It only left me sad.

  “You don’t understand what it’s like, to have children. How they disappoint you. You don’t understand what it’s like to give another person life and watch them throw it all away. You don’t understand what it’s like, Ella, to be me.”

  I studied her for another long, long moment in which she wept and my own tears slowed. At last I stood, not filled with triumph but with something else I had longed for. Acceptance.

  “No, Mother,” I told her kindly. “I don’t. And I guess I never will.”

  She nodded, focusing again on her coffee and her smoke, and I saw for the first time she was not a fairy queen I’d dreamed of as a child, nor the wicked witch I’d made her out to be later, but a woman. Just a woman, after all.

  I hugged her, the smoke from her cigarette burning my eyes. At first she didn’t hug me back, but after a moment she did, patting my back. Her fingers tugged my hair.

  We said nothing else, too fragile for words, and I left her there at the table. I thought maybe I would come back and see her again. I thought maybe we would talk again. But for the moment, what we had done was enough.

  I didn’t get religion, though I did attend Mass once or twice. The contemporary service was nice, though not quite the comforting, mysterious ritual of my youth. I found it lacking, in the end, though I enjoyed Father Hennessy’s sermon about the challenges facing young people today. After, when I shook his hand as I left the church and murmured, “thank you, Father,” he pressed my hand with fingers gnarled by arthritis and looked into my eyes when he answered, “You’re quite welcome.”I didn’t stop “not hating” my mother, either, and when she called I made more of an effort to pick up the phone and talk to her. Our conversations were strained, though. Distant and polite. She stopped asking me about Dan and started telling me more about her life. She’d taken up a membership in the gym and joined a reading group. If I found it odd to speak to her of such inanities, I’m sure she found it equally as strange not to rant and rave at me; but both of us were trying, at least, and I for one had accepted we might never have more than that.

  I spent my nights the way I mostly had for years, alone. I read a great deal. I knitted. I repainted my kitchen and steam cleaned my carpets. I had a lot of time that had seemed insufficient before, when faced with all the tasks I wanted to accomplish, but which now, without anyone to share them with, seemed vast and empty and bereft.

  I could have called him. I should have. Pride stopped my fingers from dialing, and fear, too. What if I called and he didn’t call back? Or worse, hung up on me?

  I’d lived a long time without a Dan in my life, and there was no good reason I couldn’t get on without one, now. No good reason other than that I missed him. He had made me laugh, if nothing else. He’d made me forget myself.


  The night my doorbell rang I went to my door with my heart in my throat, wishing I’d worn makeup instead of leaving my face bare and wearing my hair in a messy tail. The man on the other side of the door couldn’t have cared less, though. He swept me into his arms and squeezed the breath out of me, then knuckled my sides until I couldn’t breathe.

  “Chad!” I wriggled out of his grasp so I could get some air in my lungs, then squeezed him again before holding him at arm’s length to look him over. “What are you doing here?”

  “Luke convinced me I should see my big sister.” Chad grinned.

  He looked good. My little brother, who’d been taller than me since hitting puberty. Blond to my brunette, brown eyes to my blue, tan to my fair skin, we didn’t look much like siblings except in our smiles. I searched him for the changes time had made and saw a few.

  “I can’t believe it’s been so long,” he said.

  “I can.” I took his hand and drew him inside. “I just can’t believe you’re here.”

  Even as he sat at my kitchen table rattling off his latest adventures, I had a hard time convincing myself it was really him. He paused in his narrative to stare at me, his grin softening as he took my hand.

  “What’s that look for, sweetness?”

  “Just glad you’re here, Chaddie.” I held his hand, tight, and we shared another look.

  Survivors.

  I wouldn’t hear of him staying in a hotel, of course. I wouldn’t send my little brother to stay in a hotel when I had two empty bedrooms. It was nice, having him there. Having someone to share coffee with in the morning. To make eggs for. Someone who knew me so well I never had to explain anything. We went out to dinner at night, to the movies, I took him dancing. We spent hours on my couch talking. We watched episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard and argued over who was the hotter cousin, Bo or Luke. Chad maintained their hotness would only be magnified if they tongue-kissed, which made me laugh so hard I spilled the popcorn.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” I told him over mugs of hot cocoa topped with marshmallow fluff. “I wish you’d think about moving back home.”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “You know I can’t.”

  I sighed. “I know. Luke.”

  “It’s more than Luke. I have a job. I have a house. I have a whole life.”

  “I know, I know.” I waved my hand. “You’re just so far away, that’s all. I don’t get to see you enough.”

  “You could visit more often. Luke adores you, doll. We’d take you shopping.”

  I raised a brow. “He says, as though I need a new wardrobe or something.”

  Chad laughed. “You said it, not me. We’d put you in something other than black and white.”

  “My clothes are fine.”

  “Ella, baby. Honey. The world’s not made up only of black and white.” My brother looked around my living room. “This place could use some color, too. The dining room is fabulous. Spread some of that around.”

  He wasn’t wrong. “I like black and white, Chad.”

  “I know you do, muffin.” He reached for my hand and kissed it. “I know.”

  “Are you going to tell Mom I’m here?” He set his mug on my coffee table.

  I didn’t answer right away. “Do you want me to?”

  He shrugged. It was a rare moment when Chad wasn’t smiling or cracking a joke. He looked up and our eyes met, and I saw myself reflected in them.

  “I don’t know.”

  I nodded, understanding. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”

  He sighed, rubbing at his face. “Luke says I should. My counselor says I should.”

  I took his hand. “Chad, I know better than anyone why you don’t want to. But maybe it’s time.”

  He squeezed my fingers. “How about you? Have you kicked the ass of the past?”

  I laughed a little. “Kicked the ass? No. Stubbed its toe, maybe.”

  “Elle. What happened to your fella?” My brother stuck his fingers through the holes in my afghan and wiggled them.

  “He went home with me when Dad died. He met Mom. She wasn’t nice.”

  “He went home with you? To the house?”

  I nodded. Chad sat back, impressed or shocked, I couldn’t tell. He rubbed his face again.

  “You went back to the house.”

  “It’s just a house, Chaddie. Four walls and a door.”

  We shared another look, and he didn’t hesitate, he leaned over and hugged me. I didn’t mean to cry, but I did, wetting the shoulder of his shirt. It was all right. He cried, too.

  “I didn’t want to leave you, Ella,” Chad whispered, holding me tight. “You know that. I didn’t want to leave you alone with him. But I had to get out.”

  “I know. I know.”

  I handed him a napkin to wipe his face, and I wiped my own. We talked so much our throats got hoarse and so long our stomachs started to rumble because we’d forgotten to eat. We cried. We screamed. We threw things. We cried some more and held each other, and sometimes we even laughed.

  “There should be one good thing,” Chad said. “One good thing we can find to remember about him, Elle. So we can find a way to let it go.”

  We’d ended up foot to foot on my couch, under the knitted throw. Tissues littered the floor and my pillows had suffered our wrath. The remains of sandwiches prepared between rants dried on the coffee table.

  “He was good at sports,” I offered. “All-American Boy.”

  “He didn’t let the bigger kids pick on me.”

  “That’s two, Chad. We found two good things.”

  He smiled. “My counselor would say that’s very good progress.”

  I smiled, too. “He’s right.”

  “It’s easier to remember the bad things he did. The drugs. The stealing. The other stuff.”

  “You can say it out loud,” I told him. “It might be better if you did.”

  My brother’s eyes welled with tears again. “I tried to get him to stop. That’s when he started getting mean. That’s when he told Mom I was gay.”

  “I remember.” I lined up our feet, our knees bent in an old game. Choo-Choo train. Back and forth beneath the blanket.

  “And even when you cut yourself, she didn’t listen. She just covered it up.” His fists clenched and my heart swelled with love for his love of me.

  “I don’t blame you, Chad. Please don’t blame yourself. You were just a kid. You were only sixteen.”

  “You were only eighteen, Elle.”

  “And now we’re both older. And he’s dead.”

  “I still feel guilty for being glad when I heard. When Dad called me at Uncle John’s place to tell me Andrew had killed himself, I laughed at first.”

  I hadn’t known that. “Oh, Chad.”

  He shrugged. “I should have come home then.”

  “You couldn’t have changed anything. And she’d only have made your life hell, too.” I shook my head. “But listen, we’ve both made it through, and look at us. We’ve got great jobs. We’ve got houses of our own. Lives. You’ve got Luke. We’re making it, Chad. We’re doing all right.”

  “Are we?” He asked softly. “Are you?”

  “I’m trying,” I answered. “I’m trying hard.”

  “Me, too.”

  Being understood by someone who had been there did more for me than any amount of counseling could have. We had both survived that house and what had gone on inside it.

  “He made Mom laugh,” I said after a moment. “And when she was laughing, she loved all of us as much as she loved him.”

  “Yeah,” Chad said. “I guess that’s worth forgiving him for, then, isn’t it?”

  And for the first time, I thought it might be.

  I took flowers to the cemetery. Lilies for my father’s grave and sunflowers for my brother’s. My mother had buried them side by side, and the grass over both of them was soft and well tended. The carving on the headstones had their names, dates of birth and death. My father’s said beloved husband
and father. Andrew’s said beloved son and brother. I knelt in front of them with my hands on my lap, shivering a little in the sudden fall breeze, and I tried to pray.It didn’t work so well. My mind wandered as my fingers thumbed the rosary beads, and at last I put it away. I sat quietly in the soft, brown-turning grass, and I wept slow, effortless tears.

  It seemed wrong, somehow. Incomplete. I had not attended the graveside services for either of them. I hadn’t been asked to speak. Now, faced with two slabs of marble and a bouquet of wilting flowers, with fall winds tugging my hair, I needed to find the words I had denied myself for so long. I told my father I loved him and that I forgave him for choosing distance and drinking instead of me, and I didn’t merely mouth the words. I meant them.

  They didn’t come any easier than anything else ever had, and when I’d finished I still wasn’t done. I sat in silence for a while, trying to make a list of good things to remember. Something to hold on to in place of the bad.

  And then I did it.

  “You’re the one who taught me how to find the Big Dipper, Andrew,” I said aloud. “When I was six. It was the first time I looked up into the night sky and saw something other than numbers, something to count. You’re the one who taught me there could be beauty there, too.”

  The trees lining the cemetery had already begun turning red and gold, and the wind rustled the leaves. I didn’t imagine it as something else, an angel’s touch or my brother back from the dead to accept my forgiveness. I was too practical for that. I watched the leaves ripple, their colors so vibrant and lovely and yet harbingers of death still to come, but I took solace in the thought they’d return to life in the spring and be renewed.

  That’s what I wanted. To be renewed. Sitting in front of the graves of my father and brother, the two men who had most shaped my life, I thought maybe I’d be able to do it, too. Come to life again. Make my own spring.

  I waited for something to happen. Like for the heavens to open up in beams of rainbow light, or a hand to thrust out of the ground and grab me. All that happened was the breeze blew, and my teeth chattered.

  But I felt better. I had faced another demon and come out unscathed. How many more could there be?